Flickerman's Tale
by YourFaceLooksFunny
Summary: Caesar Flickerman loves the stage. Oneshot, spoilers for all the books. An insight into how Flickerman REALLY sees the Games.


Flickerman's Tale

Caesar Flickerman loves the stage.

He loves the feel of the warm, bright lights shining down on his face, like dancing sunbeams. Caesar loves the merriment of an audience, screaming and cheering in appreciation just for the merest of things. The roaring of a crowd courses through his veins like a delightful concoction of morphling, and gives him energy, vitality and joy.  
>Every day in the Capitol is like a dream, the rush of the big city and the flurry of happy, happy people put the biggest grin on his face and the warmest feeling in his heart.<p>

But all that glitters is not gold.

Caesar feels a sadness that knows no bounds. When he sees the eager faces of those children, those poor and innocent children who have done nothing wrong in their lives, he feels like screaming out, telling them to run far away and never return. And worse yet, when he has to watch those same children die in front of the nation, and comment on the 'dullness' or 'extravagance' of their demise, he feels like strolling through the city and shooting each and every person who contributed to this sickening ordeal.

The trouble with Caesar, in that case, is that he loves the stage _too_ much.

As a boy, the presenter of the great Hunger Games lived in a simpler world. The thirteenth District of Panem was intact, and the world seemed to work in a lot more harmonious, albeit tense, way.  
>Flickerman was an actor. He performed in more shows than he could count, and gained a lot of recognition for it. At the age of eighteen, he became a television legend, and the Capitol admired him. But unlike Caesar's showy counterparts, his peers whom needlessly slept with whoever they so desired, he kept a private and introverted life behind the scenes. Nobody knew who Caesar Flickerman was, which, of course, added to his popularity. Meaning that people cheered his name a lot more than others, which fuelled the young man's desire for fame.<p>

When the nation collapsed, Caesar was there. He hid underground in a facility underneath the Capitol, along with numerous other famous, useful or otherwise 'needed' people of the city. His family, as it were, got left in the streets, as they were not famous, useful or needed, and fell victim to the rebels. After the fight was over, people thought that Caesar would be vengeful to the Districts because his family died, and so they made him presenter of the new game they created. As it were, Caesar was not angry at the rebels at all. He was, in fact, furious at the Capitol for shutting the doors towards his family, the people who had cheered for him and supported him far before the crowds and followers had even noticed him.  
>Every year is the same. Tributes come, tributes are interviewed, and tributes die. Every year Flickerman still feels the stress and aching tugging at him, the guilt he feels at the fact that there was nothing he could do to help those poor children.<p>

Well, what _could_ he do? Caesar is no politician. He can pretend all he wants that he has influence over the audience he entertains, but he doesn't. Not an inch. All he is there for is to make Panem laugh, and it doesn't even work in the Districts.

They can see right through his charade.

Sometime in the past, Caesar began to age. The stress and turmoil he kept locked inside his mind began to snake its way out, making him look undesirable. So the Capitol changed him. Made him look artificial, fake. He was once a normal man, handsome some would say, but he looks in the mirror now and sees a scary-looking Frankenstein of plastic surgery and expensive drugs that stop him looking older.

So what does Caesar do? He dresses up for the audience. Figures that there's no way he will ever be the same again, so why not go with the sick pretence the Capitol adore so much? He dresses in bold colours, dyes his hair every colour of the rainbow, and acts like he loves it. But he certainly does _not_.

Flickerman tried to drown his sorrows in a bottle, like the drunkard of Twelve began to do. He even dabbled in morphling, and it would work for a while, made him forget about the lives he had helped to destroy. But not even drugs could suppress such a corrupted mind. They wouldn't let him. The producers made him quit the toxins he craved, as it was beginning to show on the screens across the nation.

So Caesar stretched his plastic smile across that wretched face of his and acted as he once felt for the audience.

The Seventy Fourth year had begun, and Flickerman interviewed each tribute once more. Things were going in its usual terrible fashion... That is, until the tributes from Twelve presented themselves.

They were... _different_. The female, Everdeen, she was feisty and courageous, volunteering for her sister. And the boy, he moved the audience in a way Caesar never could. He was almost envious of the pair.

The presenter secretly hoped these two would win, somehow. Just to show the Capitol that people are sick of playing by the rules. And so, Caesar slipped a bribe to one of the majestically pompous Gamemakers, telling him to allow two tributes to win. The Capitol pays him an overly-generous amount, to keep him 'happy' they say, but Caesar knows it is really because if he chose to quit the Games, he would have no money and the shock of losing such a large amount would kill him.  
>His plan worked, and sure enough, the two tributes from Twelve emerged as victors. He interviewed them a second time, and it was unlike any other he had presented. The two were in love, and it was new, and brilliant, and just what Panem needed. The Capitol fell into the tense state it had been in before the rebellion. Caesar could taste it in the air as he stepped out from his home in a morning, and he loved it.<p>

The girl became a symbol of rebellion. People all over Panem looked to her, and saw inspiration. Flickerman saw the images on the news; of Districts turning against Peacekeepers and fighting for their freedom. He tried to board a train one day to Eight, the most rebellious of the districts, but the city was being locked-down as it was once before. And that is when he got the phonecall.

President Snow.

His voice oozed down the line at him, purring at him that there is a job that needs to be done. The Games had been interrupted and there was an interview to be done. A final interview. Flickerman felt like retching, but he agreed. After all, he couldn't exactly say no. He'd be dead in hours.

When Caesar saw Peeta Mellark for the third time, it was like a different person was staring back at him. The Peacekeepers brought him in, wrists bound in shackles but appearance perfect. Almost too perfect. The presenter tried to hold back the lump in his throat as the boy sat down gently on the seat, wincing slightly. And just before the cameras switched on, Peeta had stared him straight in the eye, with some form of fear embedded in his. As if, the boy from Twelve- the boy who had fought tooth and nail for the one he loves- was calling out for help. Caesar continued with the interview, trying to seem as chipper as possible, when in reality all he wanted to do was reach out to Mellark, rip the shackles off his hands and run him out of the city.  
>After the interview, Peeta was taken to his 'quarters' – which was just a fancy word for his prison cell. Caesar saw the fear in his eyes again as he was dragged away, his eyes not moving from the presenters' face. When he was dismissed, Flickerman rushed home and sat in the corner of his lush dining hall, sobbing into his knees. This continued for another four hours.<p>

Peeta Mellark was changed. He was twisted by Snow far more than any plastic surgery could change Caesar. His mind was warped beyond repair, and at his final interview, it was like a different boy was sat beside him. This time, as he was dragged away by not Peacekeepers, but scientists in terrifying face masks and white coats, Peeta had glared Caesar deeply in the eyes, his pupils dilated and expression terrifying. As if to say, _Why didn't you help me? _

Flickerman went home that day and smashed every piece of crockery he could find, stamping his feet on the pottery so much they bled.

The rebels started appearing, eventually. Caesar made it clear that he did not want to fight against them, and so they left him alone. And the day they broke into the poor boy's cell and rescued him, along with other tortured prisoners from the Quarter Quell, Caesar was the one who had waited at the doors and given the key to the young man who was leading the operation. Hawthorne, his I.D read.

Snow didn't suspect a thing. No-one did. No one imagined that Caesar Flickerman, the goofy presenter of the Hunger Games, would help out the rebels in any way. Because nobody knew about his family, about how the Capitol left them out to die all those years ago. And so the rebels left again, with Mellark.

Caesar thinks back now and sighs. He never got to apologise to Peeta Mellark, or Katniss Everdeen, his fiancé. He never got to say sorry for his appaling behaviour, for not being able to help them when they needed it the most. Caesar wonders what they would say if he went to their door one day. Would they forgive him? Or would Peeta ram a paintbrush through his head? No, he was quite sure that Katniss Everdeen would shoot an arrow through his brain. For a second, Caesar considers doing it just for that reason.

After the final rebellion, President Snow was executed, along with a woman who ran District Thirteen. Flickerman was there, but not on stage. No, Caesar hid at the back of the crowd, in the shadows of the city, watching. And when the deed was done, and Katniss was dragged away dramatically with Mellark following intently, Caesar fled the city and boarded the next train to Thirteen.

And here he is today. Here, the legendary Caesar Flickerman, wearing drab grey robes and discoloured hair. No makeup, no pretence, no lying. Just a simple man, sat in his quarters most of the day, staring out of his window towards the forests. Thinking about the past.

About the dreadful time when he played the joker of Panem.

Caesar Flickerman _loves _the stage.

**Geddit? Sarcasm. Please review if you liked it.**


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